Today on Monday Mysteries we take a look a curious sight that I can see from the windows of our vacation apartment here in Vancouver.

The apartment is the corner of the building on the 11th floor, and has a little enclosed balcony (“solarium”) with windows on 2 sides, perpendicular to each other. Looking out the windows affords an excellent view of the mountains, harbour and park, as well as the busy road that runs by our building. The photo below is a panorama which flattens the corner views, showing on left the view to the west and on right the view to the north (remember you can click open the photo in a new window, and then click again to enlarge that version of it):

Panorama showing view from our solarium

That street has many lanes in both directions, but none of the lanes are supposed to have traffic running in both directions simultaneously. However, sometimes that’s exactly what I see:

“Collision Course”

That’s not a double-exposure image that I made on the computer. Rather, that photo is just as it was taken and is an accurate depiction of what I see sometimes on the road outside our window.

Now I’m guessing that our windows have some sort of double-paned glass that is causing a type of refraction which superimposes a reflection from one window onto the other.  However, mysteriously this phenomenon only happens some of the time, not all of the time, and only in some of the windows.  So, seeing these occasional “ghost cars” can make me do a double take, especially when it seems like the cars are on course to collide.

But logically, of course, these ghosts must be just a reflection of a car in another lane, no? Except …  I don’t always see the real car when I see the ghost car.  I mean, take a look at that photo again – do you see a car whose reflection could be causing the ghost to appear?

Nope, me, neither.

Which makes my ghost cars in Vancouver a perfect Monday mystery.